DNA on Paper Bags Links the 1987 Murder of Rhonda Fisher to Colorado Killer Vincent Groves
Douglas County deputies said a CODIS match ties the strangling of Rhonda Marie Fisher, 30, to Groves, who died in prison in 1996 and was never charged.
Published , updated
For thirty-eight years, the paper bags placed over Rhonda Marie Fisher's hands in 1987 to preserve trace evidence were kept in Douglas County's evidence holdings. On December 2, 2025, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office announced what they finally gave up: the DNA of Vincent Darrell Groves, whom the office calls one of Colorado's most prolific serial killers. He had been dead since 1996.
Fisher was 30. On April 1, 1987, a passing motorist spotted her body down an embankment in the 3500 block of South Perry Park Road, south of Sedalia in rural Douglas County. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Investigators learned she had last been seen alive the night before, walking north on Monaco toward Leetsdale in Denver. In the weeks before her death she had been staying with a series of acquaintances, and one of them became a person of interest early on before being cleared. Detectives also investigated several serial offenders active in the Denver area. Nothing held.
The case went through decades of periodic reviews. New DNA testing in 2017 produced no complete profile. Early in 2025 the sheriff's Cold Case Unit reopened the file, going through every piece of evidence with a forensic scientist from the Unified Forensic Lab and staff from the property and evidence facility, and sending additional items back for testing. In late October the Combined DNA Index System returned a case-to-case match. The DNA from the paper bags matched biological evidence from three 1979 Denver homicides that the sheriff's office attributes to Groves. Pulling a usable profile from paper bags nearly four decades old is exceptionally rare, the sheriff's office said.
Groves preyed mainly on vulnerable women between 1978 and 1988, according to the sheriff's office, which says DNA and strong investigative leads now tie him to at least 12 homicides, an attempted murder and a sexual assault around Denver, and that the true number is likely higher. He was convicted of murder in 1982 and served fewer than five years before he was released. He died in 1996 in the custody of the Colorado Department of Corrections, after convictions related to the 1988 murders of Diann Mancera in Douglas County and another victim in Adams County, cases the office says marked some of the earliest successful uses of DNA evidence in Colorado courts.
"While Vincent Groves cannot be held accountable in a court of law, we hope this long-awaited resolution brings answers and a measure of peace to Rhonda Fisher's family and friends," Sheriff Darren Weekly said. "Rhonda Fisher was a mother, daughter, sister, and friend." Her case was the seventh cold case his office had closed in seven years.
Groves was never charged with Fisher's murder; the attribution is the sheriff's office's, based on the DNA match. The office's release gives Fisher's age as 30 and places her body south of Sedalia, while its own cold-case page for her lists her as 31 and the location as Larkspur.
Sources
- Nearly Four Decades Later, the 1987 Murder of Rhonda Marie Fisher Has Been Solved, Douglas County Sheriff's Office
- Sheriff’s office: 1987 cold case murder solved, linked to ‘one of Colorado’s most prolific serial killers’, KKTV (Lauren Watson)